
Robert Zemeckis! Tom Hanks! Robin Wright! All of them in a film that covers a huge span of time about growth, life, and love!
No, it’s not 1995. This is Here.
Based on a three-hundred-page graphic novel that started in comic strips going back as far as 1989, Here is a journey over millions of years seen from the same exact spot. From the origins of life on earth through current day, this is a journey that shows barren land becoming a house and then into a home over generations and centuries.
And that’s all I have to say about that. (See what I did there? And no, I am not seeing myself out.)
Let me be up front here: I was not sure what to expect, and even after seeing this film I’m still not sure how to properly evaluate it. Visually, this is absolutely mesmerizing (which really is Zemeckis’ M.O. with his films), using some very cool transitions from storyline to storyline alongside some impressive de-aging for Hanks and Wright alongside Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly as Hanks’ parents that even subtly evolve in extreme close-ups. There are even some moments that hit me clean in the feels, especially as the end credits approached, but make no mistake: this is not the kind of film that you can put on in the background while you do other things unless it is a repeat viewing.
To say this is the best film Zemeckis has done in over a decade isn’t incorrect, but the bar for him has also not been very high. Pinocchio, The Witches, Welcome to Marwen, and Allied is the list you have to get through before making it to The Walk, which was a good film, but to get to great I’m looking at Cast Away, but was that more him than it was Hanks? He is still the director, so some credit has to exist there, but this is also not a film I would label as “great”.
In a way, Here reminds me of a much bigger scale-d version of Disney’s Carousel of Progress without the sequential storytelling that attraction features. The time jumping did not bother me in the way that other films have done, but until the last few segments, I didn’t really have any emotional stakes in what was going on. The first six minutes of this film honestly seems to be more lifted from the comic version than anything else and there is nothing from Hanks or Wright until about the twenty-five minute mark, so be prepared for that so you don’t wonder if you are sitting in the correct auditorium. I would be interested to see what this film looks like if they do a 3-D version given the way the visuals work out, but that’s really about it unless I was with someone or someone-s that wanted to watch it.
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